Her high heels clickety-clack down the road towards the pub and Charlotte opens her exceptionally tiny handbag to reapply her lip gloss. It’s a nervous habit – she already has ample coverage. Ditto the perfume, which she spritzes on her neck and her cleavage just in case he kisses her there. The light’s too low for a good selfie but she pouts and flashes the peace sign anyway – she can brighten it up later with a filter.
In preparation to see Kit, Charlotte has had her eyebrows threaded, her regular facial, a gel manicure, plus a lymphatic drainage massage as she was still feeling bloated after giving in to that pasta dish at Golly’s birthday bash – always irresistible. Damn Golly, who seems to be immune to carbs, which is really bloody unfair. Charlotte’s downstairs is regularly tended, but she booked a waxing session the week before the trip, just to be on the safe side. Plus a blow-dry before setting off, but thanks to the sea air, flyaway strands of hair are already making a bid for freedom. 47
She’s forgotten her brolly and imagines Beatrice saying, ‘You know it can turn in the blink of an eye here, Charlotte!’ but Kit might let her shelter under his golf umbrella, pulling her close to him. And he knows she’s not one of those welly-and-horses types he grew up alongside in the Gloucestershire countryside. She’s always been a city girl at heart, Charlotte. Yes, she might have given him the impression that she liked sailing, but that was when she’d assumed they meant proper yachts, not the sad little boats and dinghies Beatrice’s friends and family use here, bobbing around like pathetic corks.
Anyway, she doubts a brolly would do much good because it’s not raining, it’s just super-moist. Out of nowhere too. It was gorgeous on the mainland and really hot earlier this afternoon, but now the temperature is plummeting and Charlotte is shivering.
She’d called for a golf buggy but was told they were all busy with some pensioners’ jolly at the community centre, which was very inconvenient, so she’s had to walk.
Charlotte has been to Tresco with her godmother several times before, but this will be her first time on the island without her parents (who are in the middle of a messy divorce), and the first time while Kit is here too. There will be so many gorgeous backgrounds for her Insta. Kit and sunsets! She can’t wait!
If she gets her numbers up, one day she might get on Made in Chelsea!
She imagines Kit standing on the terrace at Falcon, framed against the sea. He might step forwards to kiss her then and her legs would turn to cooked spaghetti.
As she rounds the corner to the pub she tosses her hair upside down in preparation. 48
‘You having a fit, maid?’ shouts one of the oiks sitting on the sea wall. She’d failed to spot them in the gloaming. Locals. Nothing for them to do here but drink. Lovely as it is on the island, Charlotte knows she’d go insane in about a fortnight here – so cut off from all her pals in London.
She offers the smile as expected and then takes a pic of herself posing with the pub sign above her head, although as signs go, it’s pretty basic.
The light is now falling fast. It’s a pity about the coastal fog because dusk is usually the sweetest time for atmospheric shots. It would be so romantic if she and Kit could sit stoned and happy in the garden back at Falcon, watching the sun sink into the sea. The light would be just right. A post with her squishing her head next to Kit’s with the setting sun glowing behind them would get so many likes.
Charlotte sucks in her stomach and pulls back her shoulders to give her breasts a boost as she walks into the crowded bar. The heat hits her hard and she realises she shouldn’t have started on the gin back at the house.
She spots him immediately – Kit is a head above most of the scrum. She wriggles her way through the throng towards him, and as she gets nearer she notices his arm is slung around the shoulders of a tiny girl in an even tinier skirt; one of the barmaids, wearing the uniform T-shirt featuring the Old Ship logo which is straining against her breasts.
Charlotte calls, ‘Kit! Kit!’ but her voice is drowned out in a huge roar from a group of gig rowers. She tries to push her way through, calling again, but before she can reach him, she sees him bend and take the barmaid’s face in his hands, cradling it, before giving her a long, deep kiss.